FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SPARTANBURG, SOUTH CAROLINA – April 5, 2010 – With less than 90 days until the 2010 SouthEast LinuxFest, event organizers are proud to announce 22 speakers known worldwide for their work in the Linux and free/libre open source software communities. These speakers include:
- Ryan “Icculus” Gordon
- Known as “the entire Linux gaming industry.” Ryan has ported major commercial game titles to Linux, including Doom III, Unreal Tournament, and countless others.
- D. Richard Hipp
- Author of SQLite, Fossil, and CVSTrac. SQLite has become ubiquitous and is used everywhere from Mozilla Firefox to the iPhone.
- Tarus Balog
- Lead Developer and CEO of The OpenNMS Group, which has provided enterprise grade network management software developed under the open source model.
- Wendy Seltzer
- Member of the board of directors for the Tor Project Founder of Chilling Effects and OpenLaw projects, and liaison to ICANN. Former attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It if deals with rights, freedom, or privacy in the digital realm, odds are Wendy is or has been involved in some way.
- Jono Bacon
- Community Manager for the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution, Canonical employee, former co-host of the LUGradio podcast, and current co-host of the FLOSS Weekly podcast with Leo Laporte. Metal Rockstar!
- Bradley Kuhn
- Policy Analyst and Technology Director at the Software Freedom Law Center, as well as President of the Software Freedom Conservancy and Director of FSF. Bradley is dedicated to promoting the benefits of licensing that ensure software freedom, as well as defending it from potential threats and abuses from proprietary software.
- Klaatu von Schlecten Apfel
- Host of the Bad Apples and Fedora Reloaded podcasts and correspondent for Hacker Public Radio, Klaatu is a multimedia artist and maintainer of slackermedia.info and the SlackBuilds for LiVES, freetalk, and HandBrake. He has written articles for Linux Journal and Linux Identity magazines.
- Dru Lavigne
- Director at the FreeBSD Foundation, she has written several books on BSD.
- Pat Davil
- Co-host of both MythTVCast, and the The Linux Link Tech Show (TLLTS) podcasts.
- C. Tyler McAdams
- Project Architect at the LinuxDNA project, Tyler puts a whole new meaning to fast by having Linux kernels compiled under the Intel C/C++ Compiler (ICC).
- Barry Grundy
- A supervisory criminal investigator (special agent) with the US Federal Government, Barry specializes in Linux forensics and its practical applications.
- Mackenzie Morgan
- A developer and bug wrangler for the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution. When she is not quashing bugs with extreme prejudice, she’s probably improving the end user experience in a variety of areas.
- Alan Hicks
- Slackware developer who also co-wrote SlackBook.
- Dann Washko
- Co-host of the The Linux Link Tech Show (TLLTS), Dann also is a wealth of practical knowledge in all areas of desktop Linux.
- Stephen Spector
- Community manager for Xen, which allows multiple operating systems to be run on the same computer through hardware supported virtualization.
- Daniel Walsh
- Daniel leads the Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux) project and is also involved in secure virtualization.
- Paul Frields
- Fedora Project Leader and Chairman of the Fedora Project Board. Paul is involved in seemingly everything in Fedora from package maintenance to security to documentation.
- Greg DeKoenigsberg
- Senior Community Architect at Red Hat, founder and first chairman of the Fedora Project Board and Fedora Engineering Steering Committee. Greg currently holds a position on the oversight board for Sugar Labs. Within the Fedora community he holds the distinguished honor of being recognized as ‘Lord of the Plow’
- Max Spevack
- Manager of Red Hat’s community architecture team, and former Fedora Project Leader, Max now defines and executes Red Hat’s global community strategy.
- Michael DeHaan
- Michael currently works for Reductive Labs (now Puppet Labs), who develops puppet, a configuration management tool for systems administrators. Michael is the former lead developer for cobbler, an automated provisioning tool.
- Baron Schwartz
- Director of consulting at Percona, Baron wrote ‘High Performance MySQL’ which has become the definitive work on the subject. In addition, Baron has created maatkit, better cacti templates, and innotop.
- Russell Bryant
- Engineering Manager for the open source software team at Digium, Russell is a core member of the Asterisk open source PBX development team. He was Asterisk’s first release maintainer when Asterisk 1.0 was released.
The SouthEast LinuxFest plans to extend more than double this lineup of speakers over time. The Call For Papers is still open and will remain so until May 1st, despite an early showing that more than fills our speaking slots.
Southeast Linuxfest 2010
In case you haven’t heard, the second annual Southeast Linuxfest is happening June 12-13 in Spartanburg, SC at the Spartanburg Marriott at Renaissance Park.
There’s a lot of work going on behind the scenes to make SELF 2010 even better than last year’s event. SELF is currently accepting proposals for talks on all things FLOSS.
Registration will open soon, but you can make your hotel reservations now if you need to.
Spread the word! Let us know if you’re interested in helping out, having a booth or being a sponsor.
Southeast Linuxfest recap
Went roadtripping out to Clemson for the first annual Southeast Linuxfest with a few of my fellow CSCLUG-ers. The drive up there was pretty uneventful, and also doubled as a preview of what to expect when I head back up there for orientation.
The conference turned out quite well, with attendance numbers that far exceeded what was expected. Last numbers I saw said 455 registrations with a little over 360 actually showing up. Pretty awesome for a first year conference. Of course now the bar has been set pretty high for next year’s conference.
Meeting the people I’d been working with online to plan the conference was pretty cool. In typical fashion, I ended up taking on the task of photographer and spent most of my time wandering around taking photos of everything. I did stop long enough to catch a few very good talks, and bounced around from room to room catching snippets of other talks.
The talk by Richard Weait on the OpenStreetMap project was one of the more interesting talks that I made it to. Completely open mapping data that you can do pretty much anything with. And it’s not limited to just street data either. What’s really neat is that almost all of the map data comes from user contributions. Browsing around Charleston, SC shows a reasonably complete map, but there are gaps here and there that could probably be filled in with a few mapping parties. At the beginning of the talk, Richard asked the audience what else maps were good for, and I shouted out “finding out when the train is coming”. It was a reference to a Flintstones episode (“The Story of Rocky’s Raiders“), but I don’t think anybody got it.
Another talk by Brian Leonard on developing for platforms beyond just your own computer was pretty interesting. Showed off some pretty simple but interesting things that can be done with Netbeans and VirtualBox.
The performance by DualCore at the after-party was pretty good. Rap/hip-hop usually isn’t my thing, but their nerdcore style is something I could possibly get into.
Very soon planning for the 2010 Southeast Linuxfest will begin. I’m expecting it’s going to be a lot of work to make it at least as good (preferably better) than this year’s event.
Southeast LinuxFest rolling along
There’s still time to register for Southeast LinuxFest. Space at the Comfort Inn, the offical SELF hotel, is running low but there are still rooms in the SELF block available.
The list of speakers includes notable names from Zenoss, Google, Redhat, Fedora, Digium and others. There will also be breakout sessions that will cover topics of interest to anybody involved in using open source. Whether you’re a hardcore Linux/Opensource geek or new to the whole opensource world, SELF will have something for you. Check out the exhibitors to find out more about them or meet other like-minded users and see what they’re doing with Linux/OSS.
SELF is free to attend, but if you register as a paid supporter, you’ll also get the spiffy SELF shirt.
Southeast LinuxFest
Coming up in a couple of months is the inaugural Southeast LinuxFest going on at Clemson University on June 13. The event features a number of prominent speakers from the Linux and Open Source world and should hopefully be a fun and informative event.
The SouthEast LinuxFest is a community event for anyone who wants to learn more about Linux and Free & Open Source software. It is part educational conference, and part social gathering. Like Linux itself, it is shared with attendees of all skill levels to communicate tips, ideas, and to benefit all who use Linux/Free and Open Source Software. LinuxFest is the place to learn, to make new friends, to network with new business partners, and most importantly, to have fun!